Dark Knights Of Steel #10 variant cover.

For this cover the idea was pretty straight forward. "Let's have Batman with shield and sword and the dragon" I started on Procreate only focusing on the general composition and having silhouette the read well. I wanted to give the dragon a sense of dimension to make it imposing. I didn't want to go heavy on lineart yet. I wanted to give it a painted feel so I focus on rendering shapes, values, light and shadow. I had already spent some hours on Pinterest searching for reference materials for the armor, shield, dragon and sword. At the coloring stage I jumped into Photoshop. I did some photobashing for the ice rock where Batman is standing on and added some snow. I added some tone using curves and color balance to give the whole piece a cold feel since that will be the general tone I want. I started adding layers on color mode and overlay, the key here is to not overdo it. It's all about the subtleties, In this case I lowered the opacity on the layers so my cold base tones still come through. Then, I changed the color on the dragons eyes to make it more dramatic. Finally, I merged all the layers into a single one and duplicate it. I added details using texture brushes growing the sense of danger and cold. As illustrators telling a story with the image we portray is the goal. Hope this was helpfull, if you have any questions coment below!